"The government will not tolerate statements that create dissonance in our society and disrespect for others."
Jean Augustine, former Minister of State for Multiculturalism

Thursday, May 25, 2006

Ride The Rocket

Travelling the TTC becomes less appealling with each passing day. Anyone who rides the subway cattle cars to work and back can tell you why; it's standing room only, passengers are getting more belligerent and less considerate, and at every stop the drivers have to tell people not to charge the doors and let people off before boarding.

Now it's going to become a target for turnstile jumpers and other losers who don't want to pay their fare:

The TTC is free, if you want it.

Bus and streetcar drivers are no longer going to make sure you pay your fare as a long-simmering battle between the TTC and its union erupted yesterday with a job action that could result in free rides for the public and the loss of millions of dollars in revenue for the transit authority.

"It will be up to the travelling public whether or not they want to make a contribution to the box," said Bob Kinnear, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 113, which represents 8,500 TTC workers.

Rick Ducharme, the chief general manager of the TTC, called Kinnear's job action "irresponsible" while saying it was "premature" to calculate lost revenues.

....

According to a 2005 TTC task force on driver safety, 70 per cent of drivers had been assaulted in their career. Operators complain they are routinely kicked, punched, slapped, verbally abused and spit upon and suffer from mental distress, physical pain and worry about the spread of disease through saliva.

"Imagine what Loblaws would do if some of its customers started slapping or punching or spitting on cashiers because they were unhappy with Loblaws' prices of service," said Kinnear.

Kinnear called it a matter of "self-defence" given that TTC statistics indicate assaults against operators rose 31 per cent between 1999 and 2003, culminating last October in the shooting of a bus driver in the Morningside-Old Finch-Ave. area. in the northeast section of the city.

Let the passengers loose on some of these bums the way the passengers on Flight 93 turned on the hijackers and the TTC really will become the better way. We're all getting fed up with the riffraff like people begging on the subway cars, kids screaming obscenities at the top of their lungs, drunks looking for fights and just all-round jerks.

I reviewed a TTC report on the idea of a AFC ( automated fare collection) study around the time of the Sheppard Subway. The study was skewed to protect the Collector's in the booths , the Unions would never allow all those jobs to be automated so the cost-benefit study left out key numbers dealing with wages and security issues.

I feel the system should be paid for at the front-end so access is open to all and no money changes hands at the delivery level of the service. The savings include: No printing costs for tickets No sorting or counting from boxes No security patrols for non-paying fares No court costs for non-paying fares

and on and on.

But what Politician would destroy the Voter-pool for thousands of Union workers when raising taxes has worked so well for decades.